OwlTing has secured a Money Transmitter Licence in Ohio, extending its US coverage to 42 states.
The licence allows OwlTing to offer its OwlPay payment and settlement service in a state with a large industrial base and significant cross-border trade.
Ohio is the seventh-largest state economy in the US, with output estimated at USD $967 billion. It also has a sizeable aerospace and defence sector that generates around USD $55 billion in annual output, according to company-cited figures.
Businesses in Ohio recorded about USD 144 billion in cross-border goods trade, led by transportation equipment, machinery, and chemicals moving through trade routes that include Canada, Mexico, the European Union, and China. Those flows create demand for international payment settlement services.
The new approval expands the reach of OwlPay, OwlTing's cross-border payments platform. The service is described as a regulated settlement infrastructure that supports payments within the US and transactions involving overseas markets.
US expansion
The Ohio approval is the latest step in OwlTing's effort to build a state-by-state regulatory footprint in the US. Money transmitter licences are required in many states for businesses handling payments and remittances, making them a key part of market access for companies in the sector.
In recent months, 45% of OwlPay transactions settled within the US, while 40% settled cross-border across 21 foreign markets. The largest corridors were to China, Hong Kong, the United Arab Emirates and Nigeria.
Those flows come from customers, including fintech platforms, remittance providers and cross-border business-to-business payers. One client uses OwlPay for recurring payouts from the US to suppliers and partners across Asia and Africa.
OwlTing is positioning its payments business around regulated settlement as more financial firms explore stablecoins and other digital asset-based methods for cross-border transfers. It says the same licensed structure can support both conventional and stablecoin-based settlement.
OwlTing also linked that approach to the prospect of AI systems initiating transactions for users, although such activity remains in its early stages across the wider payments industry.
Darren Wang, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of OwlTing Group, said the Ohio licence reflects the importance of regulated infrastructure in industries with global supply chains.
"Ohio is one of the great industrial economies of the United States, built by companies that make what the world depends on and sell it across borders. The supply chains behind aerospace, defense, and advanced manufacturing never stop moving, and the money behind them should move just as freely. Over time, more of that money will move on programmable rails, and increasingly it will be initiated by the AI agents now beginning to transact on a user's behalf. Our work is to make sure the regulated settlement beneath all of it holds to the same standard from the start. Securing a license like this one is how we earn that standard, market by market, for the borderless economy that global commerce is moving toward," Wang said.
International footprint
Outside the US, OwlTing operates under a Virtual Asset Service Provider licence in Poland and an Electronic Payment Service Operator licence in Japan. Those approvals form part of a broader regulatory framework for its cross-border payments business.
OwlTing, listed on Nasdaq under the ticker OWLS, operates as the brand of OBOOK Holdings. The business was founded in Taiwan and has subsidiaries in the US, Japan, Poland, Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand and Malaysia.
Alongside payments, the group also runs businesses in hospitality and eCommerce. The current announcement, however, focuses on the payments arm and its effort to build a larger regulated network for domestic and international settlement.
The Ohio licence gives OwlTing access to another large state market as payment companies place greater emphasis on regulatory approvals while expanding in the US. For firms involved in cross-border settlement, state approvals remain a practical barrier to entry and a measure of how far a network can reach.
With Ohio added, OwlTing now has licences covering 42 states, extending its presence in a market where trade-linked payment volumes remain closely tied to manufacturing, industrial supply chains and remittance activity.